Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
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I’m not fond of such research findings but i think there is a case that there exists a trend that developing and undeveloped nations are following in the footsteps of the developed countries, spurred on by the global advertising and media industry and the fast food corporations.
At least seven planets would be required for the world to sustain the level of food consumed by G20 countries. Only India and Indonesia maintain a diet low enough in carbon emissions to meet the Paris climate target. Argentina and the United States are among the least sustainable food consumers in the G20.
“This report clearly shows that food consumption in G20 countries is unsustainable and would require up to 7.4 Earths if adopted globally,” said Joao Campari of the World Wildlife Fund.
Rich countries are consuming more red meat and dairy than is laid out in their countries’ nutritional guidelines and much more than experts say is sustainable for the planet.
“…This report shows the food system has a long way to go in delivering diets that achieve health and wellbeing within planetary boundaries…”
The problem of wasted food is particularly important among the world’s wealthiest nations, said the report’s lead author, Brent Loken, who added that rich countries currently waste too much food.
<p class=”story-body__introduction”>Millions of people around the world could be exposed to dangerous levels of heat stress – a dangerous condition which can cause organs to shut down.</p>
“We humans evolved to live in a particular range of temperatures, so it’s clear that if we continue to cause temperatures to rise worldwide, sooner or later the hottest parts of the world could start to see conditions that are simply too hot for us.” – Prof Richard Betts of the UK Met OfficeAnother study, published earlier this year, warned that heat stress could affect as many as 1.2bn people around the world by 2100, four times more than now.
Many live in developing countries, and do jobs that expose them to potentially life threatening conditions. These include being out in the open on farms and building sites or indoors in factories and hospitals. Global warming will increase the chances of summer conditions that may be “too hot for humans” to work in.
Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) measures not only heat but also humidity and other factors to give a more realistic description of the conditions.
“Don’t panic!”, Gavin Schmidt, the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York
We are often confronted with conflicting projections but this new research narrows down what we can expect in the future by suggesting best and worse case scenarios.
“It is moderately good news. It reduces the likelihood of some of the catastrophically high estimates. If we were planning for the worst, the worst has become less likely,” said one of the authors, Zeke Hausfather, of the Energy and Resources Group at University of California Berkeley.
Scientists now estimate with a 90% level of probability that climate sensitivity is between 2.3C and 4.7C. The most likely level of climate sensitivity has nudged slightly above 3C. Hausfather says a figure below 2C is extremely unlikely. Above 5C remains possible, though the study lowers that likelihood to 10%.
Having lost a lot of the science arguments, climate change deniers are now called “lukewarmers”
Two prominent lukewarmers are False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor and Fails to Fix the Planet by Bjorn Lomborg, and Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger, reviewed here
Bill Gates promotes nuclear power as green
You don’t say whether you think it’s a good or a bad idea. I am sure many Greens will think it’s a bad idea but the problem with most renewable energies is that they are intermittent depending on weather conditions like the sun shining or the wind blowing. So some more regular backup source of energy is needed. The small nuclear reactors envisaged would seem to fit the bill while not contributing to green house gas emissions.
In other words, the technical means to deal with the threat of global overwarming already exist and could be applied in socialism.
ALB, have i not been upbraided for usurping the democratic decisions of a future socialist society who will make to the pros and cons on how to administer the resources inside socialism.
My personal view is that if there is no other choice with providing abundant sustainable energy then nuclear power cannot be excluded.
I just posted on our Scottish blog in 313 years’ time, Dounreay will be safe for other uses
https://socialist-courier.blogspot.com/2020/08/dounreay-long-wait.html
Gates is proposing a different model of nuclear energy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor
My only comment has been that other Gates projects such as the green revolution of AGRA has failed to fulfil its promise.
Incidentally, today’s papers are reporting that for a short while on Wednesday morning some 60% of electricity generated in Britain came from windpower:
https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/wind-power-continues-to-break-records-as-storm-francis-hits-uk
Of course we don’t want to experience the windy conditions that gave rise to this (80 mph winds across the country) to exist all the time, but it shows that even capitalist authorities are beginning to get their act together on this. In a part of the world like Britain why didn’t they think of doing this before? (Ok, I know, it was too expensive).
Note that the backup power sources that operate under all weather conditions are burning gas (so releasing some CO2 but less than from burning coal) and nuclear. In socialism that’s going to be the choice.
Denialism and Alarmism: two sides of the same bad penny?
Following a discussion on Discord about whether or not our case against capitalism should be alarmist on this and other issues (as opposed to pointing to the scientific advances that could be applied in socialism) a comrade has drawn attention to this article;
Denial and Alarmism in the Near-Term Extinction and Collapse Debate
I see my pet hate Roger Hallam of XR gets a well-deserved bollocking,
Most news coverage of the wildfires raging in California, Washington and Oregon on American TV channels made no mention of the connection between the historic fires and climate crisis, according to a new analysis from Media Matters
Reviewing coverage aired over the 5-8 September holiday weekend, the progressive media watchdog group found that only 15% of corporate TV news segments on the fires mentioned the climate crisis. A separate analysis found that during the entire month of August only 4% of broadcast news wildfire coverage mentioned climate crisis.
7,000 edible plants could thrive in a hotter world, nourishing millions of people, said a new report from Britain’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
“Climate change is threatening to unleash weather conditions, pests and diseases that our current crops will struggle to cope with,” the report said. “If humanity is to thrive in future, we need to make our food production systems more diverse, resilient and environmentally sustainable.”
More than half of the global population relies on just three crops – rice, maize and wheat – as staple foods, making diets highly vulnerable to the impacts of global warming.
Around half of Fox News viewers think the climate crisis is caused by natural changes in the environment and not driven by human activities, according to a new study by Yale University.
A headline into today’s Times:
”Attenborough: Curb capitalism to save Earth”.
He is quoted as saying in a Radio 5 podcast:
”The excesses the capitalist system has brought us have got to be curbed somehow. That doesn’t mean to say that capitalism is dead. I’m not an economist and I don’t know, but I believe the nations of the world, the ordinary people worldwide, are beginning to realise that greed does not actually lead to joy”
Curbing capitalism — ie slowing down the rate of accumulation — won’t work because capitalism is precisely a system of capital accumulation sourced from profits. What might work is investment in non-fossil fuel energy becoming profitable as seems to be becoming the case, slowly.
Expecting capital accumulation to be curbed — the aim of all environmental pressure groups including XR — is just tilting at windmills. Capitalism can’t be curbed and it’s futile to try.
The only way out is to abolish capitalism altogether by making the Earth’s natural and industrial resources the common heritage of all so production can be geared to meeting people’s needs directly instead of to the accumulation of capital.
Collapsologists
Seventy-one per cent of Italians and 65% of French people agreed with the statement that “civilisation as we know it will collapse in the years to come”; 56% of Brits shared that apocalyptic vision – slightly ahead of Americans, at 52% – while Germans came in last with a sanguine 39%.
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